Gigabyte inspires many with their revolutionary designs and amazing support. Living up to this tradition is their latest AM3 offering for the market. Featuring the long awaited SATA 6GB/s and USB 3.0 support.

When it was first announced that USB 3.0 and SATA 6GB/s was going to be released the enthusiasts and home users lined up waiting for the launch. However it was not to be right away as controller issues stalled the release and many of the new boards launched had no support. No longer is this the case, with boards being prepped at an astonishing rate with this new Technology.

Gigabytes first offering in the AM3 market is the 790FXTA-UD5 , a Feature rich board that gives everything we could ever desire. Front and centre is the classic Gigabyte cooling layout, covering up the SB750, NB790 and MOFSETs is a beauty of a heatsink layout. All connected by one main Heatpipe. This will ensure that these chips will remain cool under the stresses enthusiasts can lay on. Expansion is provided by a trio of PCI-e 16x slots that will operate at either 16x/16x or 16x/8x/8x depending on how you populate them. This should give ample room for most graphics configurations available right now. Inbetween these sit more traditional PCI lanes for any subsiduary expansion cards you may want to use. DDR3 dual channel support is standard with OC support of up to 1866mhz, which should be enough to tame even the most hardcore of users.

The Crown Gem of this whole board comes in the form of white coloured SATA Ports. These are the nominally rated 6GB/s ones, two of which are included on the 790FXTA-UD5. Beside them are the more common 3GB/s SATA connectors, 6 that are offered internally and two featured on the rear panel connectors. This should give ample expansion for anyones storage needs. Very rare but still offered on this board is both IDE and FDD connectivity, so even those of us who can’t stand the thought of parting with our older gear can still make use of the latest in motherboard technology.